From Tom Garba, Yola
United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has donated $801,000 towards the education of over 20,000 out-of-school children in Adamawa State, especially Almajiris, those displaced by insurgency and children from dysfunctional background.
American University of Nigeria (AUN) is saddled with the responsible of making sure the children are educated through Technology Enhance Learning for all (TELA), a one-year USAID project at AUN which is to make sure all vulnerable children are educated through the use of radio, mobile classroom servers, tablets and follow-up tutorials in face-to-face session.
The AUN President, Dr Margee Ensign, said that non-formal learning centres have been established across Yola and Jimeta and that community members have been engaged as facilitators to coordinate the activities of the centres.
Ensign added that the TELA project would liaise with Adamawa State Government to ensure access to and use of public facilities and schools as non-formal learning centres, and also effectively utilise the deep reach and strong community connections of the AUN – Adamawa Peace Initiative (API) and partners to engage facilitators, reach beneficiaries and disseminate project information.
At the launch of the project in Yola were founder of AUN and former Vice President, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, the Adamawa State Governor, Jibrilla Bindow.
Atiku sympathised with the children for not being in school at the time they should, but blamed the previous governments and equally accept the blame too for not doing what they would have done to encourage the enrolment of school pupils. He emphasized his commitment to investing more on education as the best way to achieving peace in the North-East region, which is educationally backward.
Atiku told them not to have any excuse for not going to school now, as everything they need to be educated was being provided.
Governor Bindow reinstate his commitment to supporting the project to succeed.
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